How to create a Marketing Funnel?

Creating an efficient marketing funnel is de rigueur for most business these days what with both markets and competition having a global dimension. For all its dramatic description, a marketing funnel simply describes the process of the evolution of a marketing lead from the stage of mere awareness on the part of the potential customer about the company’s product or service to its purchase.

The different stages of a Marketing Funnel

As you might imagine, this process of passing through an imaginary inverted funnel is comprised of a few stages. The very first stage of the figurative inverted funnel is the one about product awareness. You can go about creating awareness about your product or service  in a number of ways-SEO optimized blogs and articles on your website, online ads, email campaign, social media posting, video content and so on.

Once you have generated sufficient buzz, you can look forward to further pique the interest of your prospects by supplying them with high quality bespoke content about your product and services by way of presenting them with case studies, whitepapers, video presentations and customized emails as well as by engaging them more directly through initiatives like regular newsletters and webinars.

You could next get them to test and evaluate your products or services by offering them free demos and trial. Once you are convinced that the prospect is convinced in his or her mind about the suitability of the product or service in question to their needs, ask for a commitment. If you are able to obtain the commitment it is time to conclude the sale.

While a satisfied customer will eventually lead to references leading to more sales, the marketing funnel continues to expand the customer base both for existing and future products and services. Think of it as a heavy duty pump that sucks in fresh air from the atmosphere, and continuously supplies it to an underground bunker, which uses up the air, almost as fast as it has been supplied.

The great thing about a marketing funnel is its efficiency. Unlike the clunky, expensive, labor intensive and time consuming customer outreach methods of the past, a marketing funnel is easily set up at a fraction of the traditional cost and is way more efficient in generating a reliable and unending supply of high quality leads. If you don’t have a marketing funnel yet, you are either surviving on luck or your luck hasn’t run out yet. You cannot not have one. After all what’s there to not like about it?